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I was pondering recently about how I have lived and worked in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and I have even touched the border with China at Khunjerab, and in all these places, there has been some presence of the poppy. Poppy as in opium, and while it didn’t seem central to life at the time, it certainly had some effect on our activities.
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QUETTA: My first encounter was with a driver in the Quetta office whose behaviour was unpredictable and worrying for me as the head of the office because if he had produced unpredictable behaviour when behind the wheel, it could possibly have resulted in an accident and might even have ended with a fatality.
I was singularly fortunate in some of the national staff I had inherited in Quetta, and I consulted with the most senior of them as to whether the driver had behaved this way before my arrival ? As we were talking in my office with the door closed, he indicated that yes, he had. He further indicated that the said driver had been under the care of the UN appointed physician for Quetta and that he – the driver that is – was a registered opium user. Nothing was written in the office records, but this intelligence came as a shock. I had noticed a UNICEF Land Cruiser late one night driving in an odd location and had asked who had authorised the use of the vehicle and for what purpose ? It all seemed to point to the unpredictable driver because there was no record of any official travel at that time, and it had been the Land Cruiser which he normally drove on official travel.
The driver’s contract was shortly to end, and I let him know that due to restructuring in the office, we were going to abolish his post, and there was no other suitable post available for him. He should thus start looking for employment elsewhere. From this point onwards till the date of his separation, he was not given any work which required carrying a passenger.
As far as the medical advice was concerned, if the driver was a registered drug user, surely the doctor’s Hippocratic Oath should have at least made him let the office know the obvious risk he was to our staff, unless, of course, he had purchased his qualifications from the local market and was thus not bound by the Oath ?
The driver was released but this wasn’t the last time I was to be affected by him. Some time later, one of my colleagues who was, at that time, the Resident Programme Officer in Peshawar asked me if I had a spare Land Cruiser because he actually needed one, so the ex-opium user’s vehicle which was surplus to requirements, was sent. Many months later when I happened to be in Peshawar before travelling into Afghanistan, I was in the UNICEF office trying not to tell the RPO anything about my forthcoming trip as it was then still highly classified, he asked me if I knew the Land Cruiser that I had sent had actually been used to smuggle opium ? I was intrigued because I didn’t believe any of our vehicles had been so used, so he took me outside to see the vehicle in question. He explained that he had decided that it should be thoroughly washed, cleaned, blown out to be rid of the dust of Balochistan, and the driver in Peshawar who did the work, had been VERY thorough. Under the floor mat on the passenger side, and under a dummy panel was a frame which took a tube in which the opium was smuggled. Apparently, there was still some powder when this cache was discovered. Quite obviously, the Quetta smuggler realised that UN vehicles were never stopped at road blocks and was able to ensure his continued supply of opium by smuggling a quantity to Quetta whenever he went on a field trip outside the city. Charming. . . . . . .but it meant that the opium-driver probably had made a lot of money before being released.
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IRAN: Whenever anyone visits Iran, they are most likely to comment on the smoking of the hubble-bubble (or hookah) in many locations as this is something generally not seen in the west. While aficionados maintain that the contents of the pipe are simply tobacco sometimes mixed with dried fruit or other aromatic biological matter, it doesn’t take too much imagination to think that opium is sometimes the additive. Or marijuana.
Originally, I thought that only men smoked the hookah – in line with the highly male-oriented society described elsewhere, but in this, I was mistaken. Darband which is an area north of Tajrish in Tehran where outdoor eating and drinking takes place, women (at that time, around 2004) would sit or lie on benches together and some of the women were indeed smoking hookahs. I was reluctant to ask outright if the contents of the pipe included opium as even then, it was theoretically illegal. But then again, what was illegal and what actually happened were often different.
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I had been asked to help restore the water supplies and sanitation systems in Bam (in Kerman Province in Iran) following their massive earthquake on 26th December, 2003. I had been quite reluctant to go as the timing clashed with my son’s wedding; but as available consultants who were familiar with Iranian customs and the language were pretty scarce, I was asked if I would agree to return to the UK for the wedding, and come straight back to Bam to complete the three months that I was willing to undertake ? I agreed.
Working in an area where more than 30,000 people of the original population of 95,000 had died during the earthquake, was sobering. It was essential to be very aware of the customs surrounding the burial and mourning of the dead. We had our own problems as we had to put up with quite simple accommodation in unheated tents (in winter which can be very cold) and also with rudimentary sanitation arrangements. It helped to realise that survivors of the earthquake were also camped out like this. Any buildings left standing were mostly at risk of collapse, so nobody had any real choice.
My contract required me to coordinate all foreign funded water supply and sanitation activities – which also included garbage disposal. Once the rescue phase following the earthquake was deemed over, it became essential that a new garbage disposal system be introduced. A ‘dump’ location was decided and all refuse collection was disgorged in this new area some kilometres from the city. I spent some time at the dump questioning children-litter-pickers to see how they fitted into the system; and to look at items being discarded because they can tell you a lot about how the society functions. In amongst the waste there were many, many syringes – obviously used for ‘shooting’ drugs – together with what looked like crude pipes for smoking drugs.
UNICEF had, at that time, a national officer as Chief of Health, who visited the site with us on a number of occasions. He was familiar with the problem and was able to describe how the flow of opium came to Bam (mostly from Helmand Province in Afghanistan), and how it was almost impossible to control its use.
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AFGHANISTAN: Inevitably, if one works in Afghanistan, the poppy is an ever-present presence, and, towards the end of 1988, I was asked to participate in one of six teams sent into the country to assess what facilities existed – and what were needed -for the anticipated return flow of the Afghan refugees who had spent years in Pakistan. It was believed that the Russians were soon to withdraw.
Accordingly, we were ‘prepped’ in Islamabad where we were advised to watch where we put our feet as IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices or homemade bombs) were placed widely. Good advice, but what would happen if we did manage to trigger one when we stood on it because we could hardly carry a mobile hospital just in case ? The answer was simple: “All the Mujahedeen have it so that when one of their number is injured, they are given the narcotic (opium) to get them to medical help in Pakistan”. Very reassuring ? At least we were warned. It was said that participants in the teams were provided special insurance cover, but whether this was blowing smoke in our eyes or not, I never did discover. None of us had anything written on the subject.
Who said that we led uninteresting lives ?
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Ken Gibbs can be contacted via kengibbs1941@gmail.com
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